


get back to where you once belonged

by tenderjock



Series: a bit like you and me [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, book still needs a therapist, canon-typical depictions of alcoholism & mental illness & violence, there's also a semi-graphic description of a grenade wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderjock/pseuds/tenderjock
Summary: Nile takes a sip of her cappuccino and closes her eyes.(Booker and Nile get that coffee. Life happens, along the way.)
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Old Guard - team
Series: a bit like you and me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897099
Comments: 37
Kudos: 294





	get back to where you once belonged

**Author's Note:**

> biggest thank you to @hauntedjaeger (saellys) / @hauntedfalcon on tumblr for betaing this and fixing my truly appalling number of typos and tense issues. this fic takes place almost immediately after 'if you're lonely (you can talk to me)' and exists in an au where booker retrieved nile, instead of andy. title from get back by the beatles.

It’s summer in Paris, which means the streets smell like piss and perfume. Not too different from her new little shoebox of an apartment in Manhattan, now that she thinks of it. Nile takes a sip of her cappuccino and closes her eyes. It’s not actually the best coffee she’s had, but it’s certainly not the worst – that would have to go to the time Dizzy decided to brew Red Bull –

She cuts that thought off. She’s not thinking of Dizzy, or Jay, or Mom or Duke or –

Her head hurts, suddenly. Gustatory experience over, Nile opens her eyes and shoots Booker a glance.

He’s drinking his own cappuccino, into which he had poured quite a bit of whiskey. Booker looks – like shit, to be entirely honest. There are dark circles under his eyes that would give Andy’s dark circles a run for their money. He smells clean enough; she half expected him to reek of sweat and stale booze. His hair is wet, like he recently took a shower, or at the very least dunked his head in a horse trough.

Having now had the experience of dunking her head in a horse trough (thanks, guys), Nile would definitely take the shower.

Nile nibbles on a corner of her pastry. It’s some fluffy thing that looked intriguing and tastes basically like a Starbucks croissant. She contemplates telling Booker that, and looks at him in time to see him eat his pastry in three terrifying bites. Nile is struck with a case of the giggles.

“What,” he says, mouth full, chewing. She shakes her head, still giggling.

“I’ve never been to France before,” she says, instead of answering. “You know. Before all of this.” Booker brightens up.

“It is the best country in the world,” he tells her. She must look skeptical, because his pain-in-the-ass patriotic arrogance rears its head. She has found in their short time together that Booker, as a Frenchman, takes everything very personally.

“Well,” Nile says, a little dubiously. “My French is okay, at least. Better than my Pashto.”

“Your French is good,” Booker says, and then ruins the compliment by adding, “for an American.”

She sips her cappuccino and eyes him. It occurred to her on the train from London this morning that the two of them had practically nothing in common, other than both being really hard to kill. Of the others, she finds Andy is the easiest to talk to, in part because Nile can ask or tell her pretty much anything without shocking her. In that long truck ride across Afghanistan, she and Booker had talked, but that was kind of a special circumstance.

The things she knows about Booker: he’s French, and old. He needs therapy, stat. He is – or rather,  _ was _ – the point man for the team in terms of research and intel. He’s terrible at thinking through his actions. He’s probably an alcoholic. None of those things exactly meet the criteria for being Nile’s friend.

Booker’s eying her, too. When she meets his gaze, he pops up an eyebrow and gives her a humorless smile.

“So what do you do,” she says. “For fun, I mean. Other than crying into your whiskey.”

Booker makes a face, but thinks the question over for a moment. “I’ve been writing an essay,” he says, “on the relationship between incarcerated populations and military drafts. And there’s always football, or rugby in a pinch. I crochet. And I prefer to cry into gin, actually.”

“Ha ha,” Nile says, and then what he’s just said catches up with her. “You crochet? Really?”

“Your surprise wounds me,” Booker says, and hefts his laptop bag onto the table. He roots around it for a while, taking out a phone charger, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a package of hair ties before finding a ball of green yarn and a crochet hook.

“My grandma used to crochet,” Nile says. She touches the yarn, curious. It’s soft.

“A nun in Genoa taught me,” he says. “In maybe 1880? There was a yacht club.”

“Yacht?” she asks, frowning. “What does that have to do with crocheting?”

“It doesn’t,” Booker says. “It was background information.” It’s her turn to make a face at him.

The rest of the morning passes quickly, quick enough that Nile doesn’t realize it’s noon until the church clock chimes the hour. They’ve gotten two more coffees each over the course of the morning. They talk, a bit. She’s been people-watching while Booker crochets square after square, hook moving as quickly as she had seen him move with a knife.

He can talk while he’s crocheting, too, without it slowing him down any. Booker’s pretty literate in both current politics and memes, which is refreshing after spending the last week of her life with Andy. And when he’s looking directly at her, he doesn’t seem quite so sad. Nile doesn’t know what that means.

Nile had gone into this meeting with the resolution that she wouldn’t mention the others, unless Booker brought them up first. But there’s one thing, a thought that’s been circling her brain since she first met Andy, that’s been sticking to her like a cocklebur, and she blurts it out: “How old is she?”

Booker’s hook freezes. He inhales, holds his breath for a few long seconds, then lets it out. He’s not meeting her eyes anymore.

“Andy, I mean,” Nile adds softly, although she feels like she didn’t need the clarification. Booker’s looking out at the street, but his eyes aren’t focused on the people passing by.

“Well,” he says, “she says she doesn’t remember, and maybe she doesn’t… but one thing I know is that she was alone for a long, long time. And that marks you.” He finally looks at her, and Nile thinks,  _ oh. _ Because in his own way, despite the presence of the others, Booker has been alone for a long time too. She finishes her coffee and presses the last crumbs of her pastry into the tines of her fork.

“It’s still wrong,” she says, quiet but fierce. “I think it’s wrong, anyway.” At Booker’s questioning look, she says, “Your punishment. The hundred years.”

He snorts, and it’s only a little bitter. “You haven’t been around as long as they have,” he says. “A hundred years – it’s not actually that long, I promise you.”

“By the time it happens, we’ll all be underwater.”

Booker lets out an exhale that might be hiding a laugh, and flashes her that humorless grin. “Ever the optimist.”

“I’m just being realistic!” Nile licks off the tines of her fork. “Global warming is a very real threat, Booker.”

Before he can respond, her phone buzzes. It’s a text from Copley.  _ Tickets from CDG to SCL via Dallas in email. Flight leaves in 4 hrs. Debrief upon arrival. _

“Shit,” she mutters to herself. She’s glad she had the foresight to bring her pack with her. Louder, she says, “Booker, I’ve got to go.”

He’s counting stitches with his left hand and doesn’t look up. “I can give you a ride,” he says. “Airport or train station?”

“Airport. Charles de Gaulle,” she tells him. He nods, tucks away his needlework, and swings that laptop bag over his shoulder. Nile grabs her duffle and follows him out the door of the little café.

In the car, she studies him. Booker’s right index finger taps the wheel of the car compulsively. He seems to follow the Andy school of driving, which is to say, very fast and with little to no turn signals. Nile checks her phone but there are no updates from Copley, just a boarding pass arrived in her emails. They drive on in silence.

He pulls up to the departure lane of the international terminal and sighs. Neither of them says anything for a long moment. “Try not to get killed,” Booker says eventually. “Permanently, I mean. It would put a crimp in my plan to save you if you went off and died.”

Nile snorts, but nods. “I’ll do my best,” she says.

“I suppose that’s all that I can ask of you,” Booker says. She steps out of the car, duffle in hand. He rolls down the window. “And, Nile – good luck.”

She waves, and keeps waving as he pulls away. It’s only when she realizes how stupid she must look that she turns, pulls up her boarding pass, and pushes Booker firmly from her mind.

: :

It’s Monday, so it must be Paris, again. Nile takes the bus to Booker’s place. She probably could have taxied, or Ubered, or something, but she’s starting to appreciate the miracle that is public transportation. And honestly –

Taking the bus monopolizes her thoughts for a short while. It’s nice to think of something other than the absolute fucking bloodbath that was Santiago. Nile steps off the bus, finally having reached her destination. It’s raining; despite what the movie industry might have you believe, there is nothing romantic about Paris in the rain. It’s just wet.

Nile texted Booker the week before she arrived in Paris to give him a heads up. It’s been over four months since she last saw him – Santiago, in addition to being very violent, was also very time-consuming. He had responded to her text with a  _ k _ and a  _ :). _

She’s looking for the number on the apartment building when something down on ankle-level catches her eye. Booker’s lying, face up, in the gutter outside of his apartment. The water reaches his chin. It can’t be sanitary. She stops to stare at him.

“What  _ the fuck _ are you doing?”

“Shh,” Booker says. “I’m communing.”

Nile squints at him. The rain is getting heavy, lashing her shoulders and dripping down her face. Her umbrella gave up on her two bus stops ago. “Communing with what?”

“ _ Shh _ .”

Nile considers him for a moment, then sighs and steps over him to unlock the building’s front door, with the key that was still in the lock. She heads on in, shaking as much rain as she can off her as she does. Behind her, Booker says, “Wait, Nile. Wait!” She ignores him.

When she gets to his little apartment, she starts ransacking the place in her search for a clean towel. She finally finds one tucked in the bottom drawer of his dresser. Sniffing it takes a little courage, but it smells just like clean cloth. Nile strips, towels her naked body dry, and then puts on one of Booker’s t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. The pants require her to roll the waistband three times before they fit comfortably at her waist but, like the towel, they smell clean.

For all that Booker’s basically a halfway functioning alcoholic, he keeps his place pretty neat. Nile carefully unwraps the cone of newspaper that holds the flowers she bought from the stand at the train station. The newspaper is wet, but the flowers are fine. She searches for a vase and ends up settling on an empty wide-mouthed gin bottle which she rinses out before using.

Booker stumbles in while she’s hanging up her wet clothes over the radiator. He’s soaking wet; he’s also still wearing his boots. If she had to guess, Nile would say that he’s been lying out in the rain in front of his building since he got home last night.

“Take a shower,” she says. She opens his laptop and types in his password. When she looks up, he’s still staring at her. He might be drunk, or hungover, or drunk  _ and  _ hungover. “What?”

“Is it Monday?” he asks. Nile nods. “Ah. That would explain why you are here, then.”

“Yes,” Nile says, more than a bit amused. “It would.”

Booker staggers off to the bathroom. After a moment, she hears the shower running. She opens up Netflix and plays  _ Pride and Prejudice, _ the 2005 version with Keira Knightley.

Lizzy Bennet is dancing with Mr. Darcy when Nile wonders if she has to rescue Booker from the shower. He’s been in there for – she checks the time – thirty-eight minutes, give or take. Almost as soon as she thinks that, the water turns off. She hits play again.

“ _ Orgueil et Préjugés _ ,” he says from behind her, a couple of minutes later. “An excellent choice.”

“I love this adaptation _ , _ ” Nile says, without turning around.

He makes a humming sound. “It’s good,” he says. “It’s Austen. The woman was a literary genius. Not quite Dumas, but then, who is?” He’s dressed, which is a bonus that she’s come to appreciate since moving in with three immortals who have known each other for hundreds of years, and who thus consider nudity to be not that big of a deal. She doesn’t want to see Booker naked, thank you very much.

“Here,” she says, and scooches over on his bed to make room. He raises a finger in the universal  _ one moment, please _ gesture. She watches as he opens his freezer, dodges several bags of frozen potstickers that come flying out, and finds a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. He rustles up a clean spoon from somewhere and climbs over her to sit at the head of the bed. Nile raises an eyebrow.

“No popcorn,” Booker says by way of explanation. “But ice cream is just as good.” He pops the pint open and, while she’s watching, licks the inside of the top.

“God,” Nile says. “You’re so weird.” Booker makes a dissenting sound, mouth full of ice cream.

They settle in to watch their movie, sharing the spoon. Neither of them mentions the state she found Booker in, or the tension in her shoulders that even Austen can’t unwind, or the way Booker twitches every time her arm bumps him.

“Yesterday was Saturday,” he says suddenly. Nile sighs and pauses the movie. Lizzie is about to be proposed to, by Mr. Collins this time. He continues, with an air of befuddlement: “Today is Monday? Yesterday was Sunday.”

“Yes, Booker,” Nile says. “That’s how days of the week work.”

He’s frowning. “I lost a day,” he says.

“I guess so,” she says, a little hesitant. She has found that Booker is clean, and organized, and keeps a little daily planner on his bedside table. (She looked at the planner while he was in the shower. It lists things like “buy gin” and “go to Louise’s piano recital.” She has no idea who Louise is). He also smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish and is generally unfit for human interaction. Nile hasn’t figured him out yet, but she thinks she likes him.

Booker’s frown deepens. “I lost a day,” he says again. Then, before Nile can respond, he hits play on the movie.

Nile licks off the spoon and then stabs it deeper into the remaining Cherry Garcia. “We didn’t get coffee,” she says, politely sidestepping Booker’s existential crisis.

He shrugs. “We can get some next week,” he says. Something in Nile’s chest goes soft at the implication that there will be a next week. “There’s a place in Firenze that I like.”

Nile takes a moment to translate. “Florence?” she asks. He nods, carving out a spoonful of cherry and chocolate chips. They watch the rest of the movie in silence. Towards the end of Mr. Darcy’s second proposal, Nile starts losing the battle to keep her eyes open.

She must fall asleep, head on Booker’s shoulder, because when Nile wakes up, it’s dark except for the light of the microwave clock. Booker is pacing the length of his apartment. Nile sits up, yawning, and a crocheted blanket that definitely wasn’t there when she fell asleep folds down into her lap.

Booker pauses the pacing for a moment. “You should get some rest,” he says. In the dark, she can’t see his face. Nile considers her options, closes her eyes again, lies back down, and tugs the blanket up around her shoulders. As she begins to drift off, the sound of Booker resuming in his pacing, just barely audible under the heavy rain, soothes her to sleep.

The next morning, she’s sitting at his kitchen table, absently thumbing through his first edition  _ Pride and Prejudice _ . He should probably keep it in a case, or something. Although it wouldn’t hold much value now; it’s worn and torn and stained with both coffee  _ and _ blood. Nearly every page is annotated in Booker’s neat script.

“You really like Austen?” she asks. It must be the fourth or fifth time she’s asked, but the novelty of a man readily admitting to liking Jane Austen remains.

“Yeah,” he says, distracted. He’s making her  _ coq au vin _ , because she told him she’d never had it before.  _ It’s not really a breakfast meal, _ he had said,  _ but who are we to let society tell us what and when to eat? _ As she watches, he puts in what must be a whole cup of brandy.

Nile props her chin on one fist. “What’s your favorite Austen novel?”

“ _ Emma _ ,” Booker says, without a second’s hesitation. He tastes the braising liquid, makes a face, and adds more brandy. The fumes coming off the stovetop are enough to give Nile a contact high.

Nile tilts her head so that her fist is propping up her cheek now. “I’ve never met anyone who liked  _ Emma  _ the most,” she says. “It’s usually  _ Pride and Prejudice _ .”

“Well,” he says, turning his shoulders so he can face her while remaining at the stove. “It’s a great book, of course, but I find  _ Emma  _ to be a more enjoyable read.” He puts the top on the Dutch oven and slides the whole thing into the oven.

She eyes him. Booker’s been drinking brandy at the same rate that he’s been adding it to the food, and the result is to make him decidedly tipsy. Nile looks down at her own undrunk brandy and, after a moment, hands it over. Booker takes it without complaint and continues drinking.

“You do know that it’s nine a.m.,” she says. Booker shrugs, and takes another gulp, sliding into the seat across from her at the rickety kitchen table.

“I’m drowning my sorrows,” he says, and it’s delivered like a joke but it falls flat.

“Are you ever not?” Nile says. She’s trying not to be judgmental at all, but he’s making it hard.

He shrugs again. “We can’t all be happy all the time,” he says. “There’s a quota on happiness in this life.”

“Well, you’re only happy when you’re sad,” Nile says. “Does that make sense?”

Booker shifts in his seat. “No.”

“You can’t ever let yourself be happy, for some reason.”

“It’s the Catholicism,” he says, and his tone is lighthearted but his eyes are flat and bleak.

Nile sighs, and picks the book back up again. She has made herself a vow that she will not be Booker’s therapist. She will be his friend; she might be his  _ only _ friend. She’s not sure. He seems to have people that he knows as acquaintances, at least. There’s Louise, and her piano recital.

He probably  _ does  _ need therapy, but don’t they all? She’d love to have someone to talk to about the shit that now goes down in her life.

“Speaking of  _ Emma _ ,” she says, instead of any of this. “Have you seen the new movie?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t get out much,” Booker says, with his humorless smile, and takes another sip of her brandy.

Nile sighs, again, and drinks her coffee in her novelty mug. Booker has a vast collection of novelty mugs. He has as much pride in those mugs as Andy has in her array of crossbows. They did, in fact, have coffee, so she guesses the trip to Paris wasn’t a complete loss. She looks over at Booker in time to see him burn both hands on the hot Dutch oven.

No. It wasn’t a complete loss.

: :

Nile is in Florence for the first time. She’s had a lot of firsts, recently. Booker is telling her that  _ The Birth of Venus _ was painted using Andy as a model. Nile is skeptical.

“It doesn’t look like her,” she says.

Booker shrugs. “Botticelli was a shitty painter,” he says.

Nile tries to recall the painting in her mind. “Really?” she asks. The corner of Booker’s mouth turns up.

“You’re fucking with me,” Nile says. Then, with the slow burn of realization: “You’re fucking with me!”

The other corner of Booker’s mouth turns up. “Maybe,” he says.

“I retract every nice thing I’ve ever said about you.”

Booker starts to say something, stops, and tilts a glance at her. “What nice things have you been saying about me?”

“Shut up,” Nile says, but she can feel herself start to smile. She takes a sip of her espresso. Generally speaking, she’s not a fan of licorice, but she’s got to admit the  _ caffé corretto  _ is pretty damn good.

Little mopeds speed by as the people of Florence head to work for the morning. Booker’s hand is trembling, rattling their little aluminum table. She knocks back the rest of her coffee and grabs his shaking hand. He had finished his coffee and pastry a while ago and settled for ripping the paper napkin into neat strips.

“C’mon,” Nile says. At his questioning look, she smiles. “You’re giving me a tour. I’ve never been to Florence before, and Nicky refused to tell me anything about it. Something about the worst years of his life being spent here?”

“Ah,” Booker says, standing and tucking his hands into his pockets. He already paid at the counter, in half Old Italian, half bastardized French. “Yes. In about 1300, I think. Maybe 1350. Nicky was always a little fuzzy with dates. Joe would know. It was well before my time, though.”

“What happened?” Nile asks. She tugs on a leather jacket – borrowed from Andy – and slides her wallet and burner back into her jacket pocket, which she zips up.

Booker lets out a little huff of a laugh. “He and Joe broke up,” he says, sliding his own jacket on and following her out of the café.

Nile stops dead. Booker bumps into her. She’s not sure why, because she  _ knows _ that relationships evolve and change and that, logically, Joe and Nicky hadn’t been with each other every second of their very long lives. But it still comes as a shock.

“Are we leaving?” Booker says, a little pointed and a lot amused. Nile makes her legs work again.

“How long were they broken up?” she asks. Booker makes a so-so gesture, accompanying a one-shoulder shrug. He manages this while slinging a leg over his motorcycle and recovering both of their helmets. Nile is mildly impressed by his physical storytelling.

“Maybe ten years?” he says. “I think, I don’t know. Ask Joe about it, he –” Booker cuts himself off, shakes his head like he’s trying to shake a bad thought out. He doesn’t finish the sentence.

After a hesitant moment, Nile takes her helmet from him. “Why do you even wear these?” she asks.

“Well,” Booker says, “it’s the law.” He waits until she cracks a smile to add, “And, besides, you know. Have you ever gotten your face peeled off by an asphalt road? Not very fun.”

“Florence has cobblestone roads,” Nile feels the need to point out.

Booker rolls his eyes and puts his helmet on, wrapping his hands around the handlebars. She notices that once they’re clenched into fists, his hands stop shaking. She climbs on behind him. The second her arms are around his waist, Booker floors it, weaving through the Florentine traffic.

Nile buries her face in the back of his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. She’d never ridden a motorcycle before last week, when Joe took her on a wild ride around the little Grecian isle that Andy had holed herself up in. She wasn’t a fan.

Booker huffed another laugh. “How’re you going to see anything if you don’t look?” he asks. Nile concedes his point enough to squint one eye out. They’re still going startlingly fast, but he’s toned down the swerving. As they pass a church, he points.

“Andy beat the shit out of a Mussolini supporter in that alley,” he says. “And behind that café – well, it used to be a café, now it’s a – sex toy shop? Huh. Nicky and Joe shanked a pedophile priest during King Charles’s war right there.” She can’t see his face, but she can hear the wry smile in his voice when he says, “Nicky  _ really  _ doesn’t like pedophiles.”

Nile turns her head so she can see with both eyes, although she doesn’t loosen her grip on Booker’s waist. “Have you guys ever done anything that wasn’t incredibly violent?”

Booker is silent for a moment. Then he offers, “I got a really good blowjob at the top of  _ il Duomo di Firenze _ in about 1905.”

She thumps him on the back, and he cracks up, which is mildly disturbing considering how fast they are driving over cobblestoned roads.

Nile tucks her helmeted forehead back into his shoulder blades. “What’s your favorite place?” she asks, suddenly curious. “Of everywhere you’ve been, I mean.” She can feel him roll his shoulders in a shrug.

“Marseille,” he says. His tone is suddenly soft. “Always, Marseille. I haven’t been there in decades, but it is my home, you know?”

Nile thinks of a two-bedroom apartment on a shitty block in Chicago and nods into his back. “I know,” she says, and then, “Maybe you should go back.”

Booker doesn’t say anything for a long while. Nile eventually loosens up enough to sit up and look around. They’re speeding, bumpily, down little side streets. She’s not sure exactly where they are, but Booker seems to know where they’re going.

They blur past houses and cafes and hotels until Booker veers to the side of the narrow road. Nile squeaks and buries her head back in his shoulder. He laughs.

“We’re here,” he says. She untangles herself from him and the motorcycle and pops her helmet off with a sigh of relief.  _ Here _ is an old building – aren’t they all old buildings, in Florence? – with a heavy wrought iron gate. Booker fishes in his pocket for a moment and pulls out a matching iron key.

“C’mon,” he says, and gestures for her to go ahead. Inside the gate, a lush garden fills the courtyard. Fountains spill out of moss-covered basins. Looking up, Nile gasps. The arches that surround the courtyard are decorated with intricate tiles. Mosaics depicting angels and dragons and saints on horses cover each little ceiling.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, voice hushed. Booker finishes locking the gate and glances up himself.

“It is, isn’t it?” he says. “But I want to show you something.”

“This  _ isn’t _ what you want to show me?” Nile asks, but follows him up the stairs to what appears to be a dining room. He unlatches the shutters, pries open an old window, and climbs onto the little decorative ironwork that frames the window. Nile hesitates, wary of the height and the precariousness of it all, before remembering that she is immortal now. Funny, what twenty-six years of common sense will do to you. She crawls out next to him.

Before her lies Florence – Firenze. The city is red-tiled buildings pockmarked by plazas and riddled with little winding streets. Mountains loom blue and hazy in the distance. Above it all, the Duomo stands. Nile feels her breath catch in her throat.

“Oh,” she says. It’s magnificent.

Booker exhales. “At sunrise,” he says, “when people are just starting to wake, and it’s quiet, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

“Oh,” Nile says again. And, without turning to look at him, she wraps an arm around him, lets her head fall onto his shoulder, and squeezes him gently. “Thank you for showing me,” she says.

Booker clears his throat. “Of course,” he says. Then: “Of course, Nile.” And right then, right there, for that moment and place in time, it feels like nothing bad could ever touch them at all.

: :

It’s six months since her first death, since the start of all this shit, and Nile is really feeling coffee. She takes the bus to Booker’s apartment and lets herself in the front door. It takes her all of three seconds to figure out something is wrong. First of all, Booker’s door is wide open. There’s a starburst of broken glass scattered across his kitchen floor. The bananas in the fruit bowl have gone brown and attracted a swarm of flies.

She draws her gun and clears the apartment with amazing professional detachment, no doubt due to literal years of Marine training.  _ Thanks, military-industrial complex _ . It’s only when she’s verified that the little apartment is empty that her heart starts to pound.

Nile holsters her gun and calls Andy. She picks up on the third ring.

“What’s wrong?” Andy asks, and Nile silently wishes for a life where  _ what’s wrong _ would not be an appropriate answer to a telephone call.

“Booker’s not here,” she says. There’s silence. Nile shifts on her feet. The others know that she meets up with Booker occasionally. They’ve never talked about it. She’s never  _ wanted _ to talk about it before.

“He’s probably dead drunk in an alleyway somewhere,” Andy says, and despite the harsh tone of her words, she’s gentle with it. Nile shakes her head, for all that she can’t see it.

“No,” she says, “it looks like his apartment was broken into. And he told me he would be here.”

There’s another pause. Then, slightly muted, she hears Joe say, “She’s right. That’s not like Booker.”

“Give me the facts,” Andy says, and Nile inhales through her nose, out through her mouth, and gives Andy the facts.

Things spin out of control very quickly. Copley tracks down CCTV footage of a body being loaded into the back of a semi-trailer. Nile recognizes the shoes. They trace Booker’s whereabouts through another truck, a ferry to London, a plane to Miami, and finally to a private isle in the Caribbean. The team rides to the rescue, only to be hit with the one thing that could possibly give Andy pause: Quynh.

They’re on a little yacht, anchored at a private pier. When the team arrives, Booker’s being dragged back on board. If Nile thought he looked like shit before, it’s nothing compared to how he looks now. He comes to in a great spluttering gasp, deep scrapes on his torso and limbs that slowly heal as she watches. He rolls over onto his side and retches. Quynh grabs him by the hair and yanks him to his knees.

“See, Booker,” she says, “say hi to the nice people.” She snaps her fingers. It’s two against four, assuming that Booker was useless in this fight, but Nile has learned that numbers aren’t necessarily the determining factor in victory. Sheer crazy could go a long way.

Quynh’s man steps up and smiles a razor-sharp smile. It wasn’t too impressive, to be honest; Andy sort of had the monopoly on razor-sharp smiles. He tosses something at their feet and Nile’s years of Marine training come flooding back to her as she recognizes the grenade for what it is.

She catches a hand against Andy’s chest, shoves her back  _ hard _ , and throws herself on the grenade, wrapping her body into as tight of a ball as she can. It’s only half a second that she lies there, tense with anticipation of pain, but it feels like forever. When the blast comes, she rockets through agony almost immediately into unconsciousness.

It takes a while to heal. She remembers, fuzzy with pain, that Booker told her that, when they first met. Big wounds take more time.

Nile rolls over slowly onto her back, rather dazed from her latest death. She can feel the muscles of her belly knitting themselves back together, which is not a very good feeling at all, although she supposes it would be worse if it  _ weren’t _ stitching itself back together.

She’s lying on the bow. Her hands flex uselessly – she managed to retain her grip on one of her trusty stun batons when she got blown up, but she’s got almost the whole yacht’s deck between her and Quynh and she can’t even muster up the strength to sit up.

Her right hand, the one with the baton, hangs off the edge of the bow. Wetness that doesn’t come from the gaping hole where her internal organs should be touches her fingers. Nile screws up the fortitude to turn her head to the side and sees that on the deck of the boat, there’s a pool of about an inch of salt water. She stares stupidly at her fingers for a long second. Water. Why is that important?

A surge of pain pulls itself through her, as her intestines reconfigure themselves into her torso. Nile groans and instinctively pulls herself into a fetal position. The pain doesn’t lessen, but she feels a tiny bit more secure about it.

“Nile –” Booker says, across the deck where he’s kneeling at Quynh’s feet. She turns her head to look at him. He’s wearing blood stained rags that might have been nice clothes once, before he got keelhauled a dozen times. His feet are bare. Quynh’s feet, too, are bare; stylish sandals that go with her stylish outfit are laid out next to her mojito on the deck chair. Andy, standing with her back to Nile, clutching a shallow cut in her cheek, is wearing rubber-soled combat boots.

_ Oh,  _ Nile thinks.  _ Water _ . And then:  _ I’m sorry, Booker, _ and she closes her eyes, touches the tip of her baton to the deck, and squeezes.

Quynh screams, more anger than pain, and Nile hears the familiar  _ snick _ of Andy’s labrys being tugged free of its sheath. She doesn’t bother to open her eyes until the skin of her stomach starts to stitch itself up.

When she does open her eyes, minutes or centuries later, once the pain has abated somewhat, she sees that Andy has cornered Quynh at the stern of the yacht, labrys at her throat. Quynh has her teeth bared. Joe emerges from below deck, with Quynh’s – bodyguard? Servant? Pool boy? – at gunpoint. Nicky follows, blood-spattered and hard-eyed. Joe makes the man lie face-down on the deck and puts a boot to his neck.

Andy says something in Vietnamese. Quynh snarls back. She’s leaning back over the edge of the yacht but her grip on the railing is white-knuckled.

The others seem to have a firm grasp on whatever the hell is now going on. Nile goes to Booker.

“Hey,” she says. He’s sitting up, head in his hands. She touches his shoulder.

“Hey,” he says back. Nile starts to get to work on the thin fishing line that’s securing his wrists tight enough that his fingers are turning purple. She initially tries to untangle it, but quickly transitions to hacking at it with her belt knife.

“Sorry I electrocuted you,” she says. Booker gives a one-shoulder shrug.

“Considering the circumstances,” he says, “I can’t really complain.”

Nile smiles, a little, and finishes cutting through his restraints. Booker rubs his hands together slowly, flexing the knuckles. The swelling goes down rapidly, and within thirty seconds his hands are just his hands again.

“Christ,” Booker says. “I could use a drink.”

Nile thinks about it for a second, then goes over to fetch Quynh’s mojito for him. He ignores the straw and instead gulps it straight from the glass, like an animal.

“God,” she says. “Who raised you?”

Booker snorts, nearly chokes on a sprig of mint, and puts the now-half-empty glass down. “Fuck,” he says, and wipes at his mouth. Since his shirt is in tatters and also soaked through with sea water and blood, it doesn’t do much to help.

Nile glances over at the others. Andy and Quynh are in tense conversation; Andy’s labrys is still raised, but she’s taken a step back from the boat’s guardrail. Nicky has finished tying up Quynh’s man and both he and Joe are standing at Andy’s shoulders. As Nile watches, Joe glances at her, down at Booker still on his knees, and tilts his head in a wordless  _ come here _ gesture. Nile gives him the tiniest of nods, then turns to Booker.

“C’mon, le Livre,” she says, and offers him a hand. “Time to face the music."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks again to hannah @hauntedjaeger. i'm tenderjock on tumblr as well!! feel free to send me a message anytime.


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